Selected writings

It is one of the most effective dogmas of Enlightenment research that German-speaking philosophy did not develop a materialist theory. In contrast, the texts of Michael Hissmann (1752-1784) show that an ambitious materialism indeed emerged in the context of the Göttingen empirical school in the late 18th century. Hissmann sought to implement his materialist foundational theory in various fields of philosophy, such as psychology, anthropology, practical philosophy, historical sciences, philosophy of language, and poetics. Against the fundamentally materialism-critical backdrop of the German late Enlightenment, this affirmative reception and systematic elaboration of materialism by Michael Hissmann is particularly striking, and it was therefore met with suspicion by many contemporaries. This volume brings together texts for the first time.